


Paper Thin

by Sigridhr



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Thor (Movies)
Genre: Bucky has issues, F/M, Friends to Lovers, pig dogs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-04
Updated: 2019-10-04
Packaged: 2020-11-23 04:02:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,874
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20885798
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sigridhr/pseuds/Sigridhr
Summary: Bucky doesn't let anyone close enough to touch. He cannot stand the feeling of other hands on his skin. The world feels altogether too close and too busy for him to cope with.Darcy is, well, Darcy.





	Paper Thin

**Author's Note:**

  * For [amidtheflowers](https://archiveofourown.org/users/amidtheflowers/gifts).

i.

“So how come you never date?” 

Bucky stops dead, staring flatly at Darcy who is leaning on the bar, her arm propping up her head. She looks curious and he tries to gauge the way her body is placed, how much distance is between them and what her body language is saying. 

He concludes it’s saying nothing much. 

“You don’t have to answer,” Darcy says. “Just, you know - everyone else has hooked up. Or has a secret family. But you seem to keep to yourself. I’m kinda surprised you’re even here.”

He knows who she is - he has a mind for faces, unfortunately, and he pays attention to crowds. He’s seen her with Jane and Thor, and later around ‘Avengers HQ’, but he doesn’t think he’s ever even spoken to her. 

“That’s a rather personal question,” says Bucky. “The answer is no.”

“The answer to why you never date is ‘no’?” She sounds like she’s going to laugh. 

Bucky feels on the wrong foot all of a sudden. His skin prickles uncomfortably and he has to bite down as he feels the nauseating vibrant flow of adrenaline through his veins. The noise in the bar seems to blend together into an uncomfortable cacophony. Darcy seems to sense the shift, and she stands, her brow furrowing looking him over in concern.

“Sorry,” she says, and her voice is gentle and low, cutting through the din. “I didn’t realise I was touching a nerve.” 

Bucky wishes more than anything he was a little less _obvious_, a little less readable, but it’s all he can do to keep still. “Why do you want to know?” he grinds out. 

“I was teasing,” she says. She reaches out a hand halfway as if to rest it on his arm, but she thinks better of it halfway and her hand hangs awkwardly in the space between them. Bucky is secretly grateful. “It’s just everyone’s been taking the piss out of Steve and Sharon this evening and it got me thinking.”

Bucky blinks slowly. The world is shifting again, the noise of the bar around them is separating back out into discernable voices and music and is no longer an overwhelming roar in his ears. His heartbeat slows in his chest. 

“Steve,” he echoes, somewhat dumbly. “And Sharon.”

“Yeah, you _know_ right?” 

Bucky grimaces. “I was there, yes.” 

Darcy looks as though she’s both deeply curious and doesn’t want to ask any more questions. She shuts her mouth with an audible clack of her teeth and then grins. “Look, this is one of my worst introductions. I have something of a habit of putting my foot in things, but I promise it’s not intentional.” She holds out her hand. “Darcy.” 

He doesn’t take her hand – his mother would consider this appalling manners, and a part of him still has it deeply ingrained within him to be a gentleman, but he can’t stand the thought of _touching_ – but he nods and raises his glass. “Bucky. I should apologise to you.” 

“Nah,” says Dracy. “It’s all good. But if you’d like to I bet you know a heck of a lot more we can tease Steve about than Sharon?” 

Bucky does. 

ii.

It’s a wild rush of missions and global round-trips to track down rogue Hydra agents before he runs into Darcy again. He’s sent out to clean up what Natasha has euphemistically referred to as a ‘negative event’, but what could more accurately be described as ‘all bloody hell breaking loose.’ One of Jane’s numerous attempts to replicate a stable method of travelling between planets had backfired and an army of murderous, well, pig dogs, for lack of a better word, had come through. By the time Bucky and company arrives, their lab was in smithereens and Thor’s covered nearly to his head in the things which were climbing over each other in their bid to take a bite out of him. 

They make as short work as possible of the things, while Jane and Erik Selvig try to close up whatever it was they’d opened. Bucky finds himself keeping a perimeter around the two scientists, picking off anything that moves in their direction. Each shot is careful, economic and quick. 

He sees something move to his right and turns to fire, catching a glimpse of brown hair in his sights. Darcy’s crouched underneath a patch of fallen ceiling, her leg bleeding profusely and looking grubby and frightened. His pulse races for a second, almost a second too long. He shoots the pig dog to the left, but hits it in its hindquarters, only crippling it. It takes a second shot to properly put it down.

When the carnage is over, Darcy is still tucked in her little corner. He pulls the ceiling tiles off her, leaving her hair coated with plaster like fresh fallen snow. His fingers convulse as he reaches out to _touch_ –

Her leg needs pressure. There’s a sizable bite, although the bleeding has turned sluggish and Bucky suspects that it wasn’t as serious as it could have been. He knows what he ought to do, but the thought of pressing his hands – his hands which had just held a rifle he’d pointed directly at her – to her bare leg makes him freeze, as though he isn’t in control of his own limbs anymore. He ducks out of the way just in time to avoid Steve rushing in, murmuring a series of platitudes and pressing a handkerchief – god only knew where that had come from – to Darcy’s open wound. 

Her eyes stay fixed on him the entire time, wide and frightened. Even after Steve picks her up and carries her out to have her leg looked at, she still peers around his shoulder at him. 

He winds up at her bedside in the small house she shares with Jane and Thor. Thor had insisted they spend the night, and, after pacing restlessly for several hours, he makes the excuse that he wants to check on her. He does, and the thought surprises him. But a part of him feels oddly guilty at his own inability to do anything to help her. If it had been different, he might have let her bleed out simply to avoid pressing his hands to her skin. 

She’s dozing restlessly when he comes in, and he places a fresh glass of water by her bedside. She blinks blearily up at him and, in a sleep-addled voice that feels far too intimate for Bucky’s comfort says, “Oh, it’s you.” 

“I’m sorry,” he says. 

“Don’t be,” she mumbles. She rubs her eyes and sits up, dragging her lower body carefully so as to not jostle her leg. “You were great. Lots of cool hero stuff saving us. If anything I’m sorry I hid the whole time.” 

“You were injured,” Bucky says, sitting down in the chair next to the bed and leaning forwards, his arm propped up on his knee. 

“Yeah,” Darcy replies, more enthusiastically than he expects. “War wound. Do you think it’ll scar?” She sounds surprisingly optimistic. Before he can stop her she’s whipped the bedsheets off her leg, brandishing it at him. 

“It will probably scar,” Bucky concedes. “But I’m sure you can fade it.”

“Nah,” says Darcy. “I like scars. Shows you’ve done stuff.” 

Bucky winces internally, and flexes the fingers of his metal hand reflexively. Darcy spots it right away. “Can I see it?” she asks.

Bucky sits up straight, leaning away from her. “I’d rather you didn’t.”

“You don’t like touching, huh?” Darcy says, musingly. She’s scrutinising him closer than he’d like. 

“No,” he says. 

“Always? Or just recently?” 

“Again, a personal question.” 

“I’m a personal kinda gal,” Darcy says. “Feel free to ignore me when I cross the line, but I did technically warn you I like to put my foot in it.” 

He dangles on a ledge, unsure whether to let himself fall. But, like with the bite earlier, he freezes and he can’t make himself bridge the gap. 

“I can’t,” he says. “I’m glad you’re OK.” 

“Sure,” she says, though she sounds a little disappointed. “Come back soon so I can show you my scar.” 

It’s earnest and odd and all sorts of things he’s not prepared to engage with. Steve gives him an odd look as he storms through the kitchen and out onto the back patio. He follows him out, resting on the rail beside Bucky, keeping an inch’s separation between their bodies. 

“She get under your skin?” Steve asks quietly. 

“What skin?” Bucky mutters. He feels like he’s made of paper and he’s slowly being shredded. 

iii.

It’s five months later and he’s sat peacefully on a park bench, staring blankly out at the city. He’s grown used to the fact that that New York has changed irreparably, but he sees the vestiges of the city he grew up in buried beneath a haze of concrete, LED billboards and modern cars, and it still feels a bit like poking an open wound. He longs more than anything to go back. 

The bench shifts under him as Darcy flings herself down beside him, careful not to touch, but he can feel her body heat radiating out through her coat and her breath fogs in the air between them. 

“Dude!” she says. “Check it out!”

She yanks up her pant leg, brandishing her leg in front of his face. He can see a perfect bite mark, like two ragged crescent moons on her calf. She grins wildly at him. 

“You’re crazy,” he says. She jiggles her leg in front of him and he wants to bat it away, but she’s laughing and saying something about how she has ‘street cred’. 

“I’m glad it’s healed well,” he says finally, in a last ditch attempt to get it removed from in front of his face.

“Sure has,” she says, yanking her pantleg back down and tucking her leg under her to warm it back up. “How’ve you been?”

“Oh, you know, alive,” he says, mildly. 

She drums her fingers on the bench and he can feel the vibration like an itch. “So, do you want a coffee?” she asks, speaking oddly fast. “Only it’s freezing and I feel like I owe you one for that time I freaked you out in a bar and you saved my life. And possibly for wagging my leg at you –”

“Sure,” he says. He’s surprised he’s agreed, but he actually doesn’t mind. It’s better than sitting like a relic in Central Park, looking at the ashes of a world that no longer exists. 

“Great!” she says, and leaps to her feet. “I know just the place.” 

The coffee shop is warm, cozy and independent, and Darcy wanders over to a corner, curling up into a nook filled with cushions and chucking her gloves, hat and scarf onto a plant-filled ledge above their heads. She sheds her jacket as well and leaves the whole wooly pile in a heap as she leaps back up. 

“What can I get you?”

“Don’t be silly, it’s my treat,” he replies, automatically. 

“I invited you,” she says. “What can I get you?” 

There’s an odd battle of wills, but he feels weirdly out of his depth and off-kilter already and he decides he isn’t going to lose this one. “I insist,” he says. “What would you like?”

Darcy chucks a glove at his head. “Fine. Latte please.” 

“You do realise this means I’m going to make you come here again so I can buy you coffee, right?” she shouts after him as he makes his way to the till. The patrons in the shop turn around to look at her, and she rests her chin in her hands batting her eyelashes at him ostentatiously.

“The idiot would like a latte,” he says to the barista. 

He wraps his human hand around the cup, letting the coffee warm his fingers. Darcy is assiduously scraping foam from the sides of her cup with a spoon and licking it off. He’s fixated by it, the way her tongue drags over the concave metal like a cat. She pauses, spoon held in her mouth with its handle poking out the bottom and grins at him, and at once, the moment is gone. 

He swallows. 

“Tell me about the city,” she says, leaning forward. “You grew up here, right?” 

“Brooklyn,” he corrects automatically. He does – he talks about his house, about saving up and buying an orange as a treat for ten cents on a Sunday after church. He talks about going to Coney Island on a date, and about Steve’s numerous pity dates. He talks about playing baseball in the rundown park, and how he used to practice dancing with a broomstick in secret in his bedroom, and about the one time he and Steve tried to practice together as kids but they’d just collapsed laughing too hard to get anything done. He talks about sneaking up onto the roof and blasting the wireless so he could hear the Dodgers game as he watched the sun set. 

Darcy watches him, looking enraptured. She doesn’t interrupt, and she sits quietly when he gets lost in thought just long enough before gently prompting him with a question. They finish their coffee, and a second, and before Bucky knows it the sun is down and he’s running out of stories. He edits, of course, leaving out any mention of the war. He edits a lot of Steve as well, still protective of the little boy his friend once was. It feels like a betrayal to lay him out bare, even though he knows Steve wouldn’t care, and that Darcy wouldn’t be cruel. 

When he finally stops, she starts: she tells him about growing up on a farm. About staying up late at night to look at the stars – the real reason she ever applied to work for Jane, even though she has no head for hard math. She tells him about all the animals they kept, and how her dad would read to her late into the night. She doesn’t like cities, she says, though she’s grown used to them. She prefers the silence – another reason why she’s happy to follow Jane out to observatories on mountain tops in the middle of nowhere. 

It’s dark when they leave. They’re asked to leave, actually, as the coffee shop is closing. Darcy’s still trying to get her gloves, hat and scarf on all at once as they head out the door, and instinctively he grabs the scarf from her and winds it around her neck. His fingers brush the nape of her neck just for a second, her dark hair curling teasingly around them. He shudders, his skin prickling, and he pulls his hand away sharply. 

He feels the warmth of her skin like a brand on his fingers. He clenches and unclenches them reflexively. Darcy flicks her hair back, and her dark curls tumble down her back over her scarf. He wonders if she can still feel his touch as intensely as he does. If she does, she doesn’t seem to acknowledge it. 

“Walk me home?” she says. 

And he does.

iv. 

_I hear you got a phone now! - D_ 4:03pm

**Yes.** 4:06pm

_excellent. got words with friends yet? I’m bored_ 4:06pm

**I have no idea what you’re talking about. I’m also busy.** 4:12pm

_ooooh secret mission? Deets pls. Tell steve i say hi_ 4:13pm  
_oh also i owe you coffee when you come back so hmu when you’re in town_ 4:13pm  
_also also don’t go too far on your secret mission just in case jane releases any more pig dogs :)_ 4:13pm

**Your boss is a menace.** 4:22pm

_ha! I’ll tell her you said that. She’s not really tho she’s just brilliant and brilliant people can be… well… mental. I mean she’s great fun but sometimes i think her drive to get to the bottom of things overrides her good sense_ 4:24pm  
_but not like in a tony way_ 4:24pm  
_thank god or i’d quit_ 4:25pm

**What exactly is she trying to get to the bottom of?** 4:25pm

_einstein-rosen bridges. She’s building pathways between worlds and trying to make them stable. I mean i know you know she can do it because you’ve seen the pig dogs, but we’re currently on a mission to find essentially an aiming mechanism? Currently we have a bridge which just opens up randomly anywhere in the universe which has lead to some negative outcomes._ 4:27pm

**You sound like Natasha.** 4:36pm

_literally no one has ever said that and i have never felt this cool in my entire life_ 4:36pm  
_also i expected you to text more formally. You’re weirdly down with this newfangled technology for an old fart_ 4:36pm

_sorry_ 4:45pm  
_you’re not an old fart. _ 4:45pm  
_You’re a new fart._ 4:46pm  
_A fresh fart._ 4:46pm

**Sorry, I was busy. I’m a little insulted you thought texting was below my capabilities?   
Please stop calling me a fart.** 5:11pm

_aye aye sir_ 5:12pm  
_everything ok?_ 5:12pm

**For now. Any pig dogs on your end?** 5:13pm

_hahahaha no not yet although jane’s about to run a test of something so i’ll keep you posted_ 5:15pm  
_you can be on pig dog watch_ 5:15pm  
_if i don’t report back in ten minutes assume the pig dogs are upon us_ 5:15pm

**It’s been more than ten minutes. How is life under Pig Dog rule?** 5:32pm

**Darcy?** 5:44pm

**Darcy respond** 6:01pm

v.

Jane Foster _is_ a menace, no matter what anyone says, Bucky decides. She’s opened another bridge to God-knows-Where and by the time Bucky arrives their lab is in cinders and Jane and Darcy are looking sheepish on the lawn, covered in some sort of green goo that Darcy just calls ‘Alien guts’ and refuses to elaborate on. 

She seems touched and a little confused that he’s shown up, guns blazing. When he says she didn’t text back in ten minutes she laughs, then shows him her goop covered telephone. “Sorry. Thanks anyway, though, superman.” 

He nods awkwardly and takes a step backwards, but she stops him. 

“Hey, listen, I owe you a coffee. Would you mind sticking around long enough for me to shower? I have something I want to show you.” 

The walk back to Darcy’s apartment is sticky and she spends most of it holding her arms out to her sides to ‘decrease to goo transfer’ and walking like an abominable snowman. It would be adorable if it were less disgusting, Bucky thinks, as he watches a particularly gruesome glob of something that may or may not contain an eyeball slowly slide down Darcy’s hair. 

He’s left alone in her apartment while she showers, and finds himself running his finger over the spines of her books, looking for ones he knows. There are plenty of well-worn classics from his own childhood here, but he’s surprised to find she’s an avid science fiction reader (although in hindsight he supposes it was obvious). At last Darcy emerges, still toweling her wild hair and holding an enormous duffle bag. 

“Come on then,” she says, happily. 

She marches him over to a new coffee shop and plonks down two travel mugs, getting the barista to fill them both, and then ushers Bucky back out the door in a shoooing motion. She’s picked up two scones as well, and she’s holding them in a paper bag clenched between her teeth. 

“Where –?” he starts to ask. 

“This way,” she says, somewhat muffled by the bag. They turn down an alleyway and then she starts climbing up a fire escape. Wordlessly, and bemusedly, he follows her up. 

The roof has an incredible view over the city, and the last rays of the sun are just setting, and the sky is a bright rose gold, stretched out ahead of them. He can see the lights of the city beginning to twinkle in the distance like stars and he feels his heart leap up into his throat. Darcy is busy emptying the duffel bag, chucking down a blanket, the scones, their coffees and a portable radio, which she switches to the sports channel. 

“I know it’s not the same, –” she begins. He stops her by grabbing her face in his hands and kissing her deeply. 

Her skin is warm and pliant under his touch and he hasn’t _touched_ in so long it feels completely electric. Every nerve ending in his skin seems attuned to her, humming with want, and he presses himself up against the length of her body, pulling himself as close as he can manage. It’s like a floodgate breaking, and years of pent up solitude come pouring out. 

Darcy, to her credit, catches it all and holds on to him as tightly as he clings to her, tangling her fingers in the hair at the nape of his neck and rubbing soothing circles over his pulse point. He picks her up, and she wraps her legs instinctively around his waist. They fall, clumsily, onto the blanket beneath them, and he can hear Darcy laugh in delight. Her hair fans out behind her and he entwines their fingers, pressing her arms above her head and rocking into the delightful heat of her body. 

She grins up at him. “Jesus I had no idea this was all it took –”

He brushes his hand over her nipple which hardens under her touch, running his fingers teasingly along the edge of her bra and then back to circle her nipple again. 

“Bastard,” she mutters from underneath him, and he laughs, tucking his head into the crook of her neck and pressing a kiss there. She sighs softly, and it’s the most wonderful sound he’s heard in _years_. 

The rest is a flurry of undoing buttons and clasps, and Darcy drags her teeth down the skin from his navel to the waistline of his pants and he thinks he might actually _die_. It’s hardly the most finessed coupling he’s ever had, but he’s afraid to stop touching her, afraid to pull his hands away in case he never puts them back, and she pulls him in, wrapping herself closer and closer around him. She’s warm inside and as they move together in the cooling summer air he feels more alive, more _human_ than he has for as long as he can remember. At last he comes, breaking apart like a wave on a shoreline, and collapses in Darcy’s arms. 

They stay entwined, their sweat cooling in the evening air, and Darcy rubs slow, gentle circles on his back. 

“I mean I was just gonna listen to baseball and have coffee,” she says at last, “but like this is good too.” 

He makes a happy sort of grumble and presses his lips against the soft skin of her neck and smiles. She turns, kissing his forehead. 

“Just for the record, when we met I was totally hitting on you.” He can feel her grin against the skin of his forehead and for the first time, he doesn’t want to pull away.


End file.
